Well blogging, we meet at last. I’ve had mixed feelings about the practice of blogging since I first heard of it and thought “Really? That’s the name you’re sticking with?” But it has finally reached a point where I think, well why not? Now I’ve never kept a blog, and I don’t actually know that much about them despite being part of “that generation” that should apparently have a manual of some sort in their brain for all basic computer programs and functions, in which case I don’t know if there’s some sort of formula to blog posts or some kind of blog management etiquette, but I’m sure I’ll figure things out. I only mention it so that if there are accidentally 20 posts in a row of the same thing or something you’ll be forewarned of the experimentation and learning period in progress.

So, the theoretical point of this blog is to be somewhere for me to post things that I write. And I do mean ‘things’ because I tend to write short snippets of fiction, though sometimes there are short stories and such too. I suspect most of my posts will come from an intriguing book I have which is called ‘642 Things To Write About’. It’s simply a collection of short (anywhere from a couple of sentences to just a word) starter phrases designed to get you thinking and writing. For instance, “The greatness of sandwiches” or, “Go to a café and closely watch two people interact. Then write a scene about to people in a café” or “Create an imaginary friend (human or not)” (I have high hopes for a hedgehog being involved in this one), and so forth. As you can see, they’re diverse, so posts on here could be pretty random. Just the way we like it I say. I imagine there will also be some first-person posts from me, who can say? But when things come from “the book” I’ll use the prompt as the post heading and then my writing about it as the body of the post (I say confidently, like I’ve already mastered my heading/post functions).

I’m not sure yet how often I will post something because I’m not sure yet how this blog and I will feel about one another, but I will try to post with reasonable frequency because, really, it’s just stagnating and taking up space in the ether otherwise. That being said, welcome to my blog invisible people!

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Use these words in a story- powwow, harem, opposable, grim, pragmatic, sanctimony, tremolo.


“Nathan! My god man, don’t look so grim!”

“George, we are in a harem! A harem, how am I supposed to look??”

“Pretty cheery I would think, actually... Come on, apparently we’re going to have some kind of little powwow in the courtyard”

 It looked as you would expect it too, sumptuous, I believe the word is. Wide, open passages, ornately tiled with vines creeping in through arched, glassless windows. Pillows absolutely everywhere. Stop behaving with such sanctimony George had told me, but it’s not that really, I appreciate the female form as much as the next man with functioning eyeballs in his head, no, it’s more that I’m pragmatic at heart and I knew we had been invited here with an agenda, one which I was waiting on to become clear, one which I suspected could make it difficult to extract ourselves from this situation and not for pleasant reasons.

“It looks like it’s going to be some sort of musical performance eh?”

“What on earth gave you that impression George, not the musical instruments, surely?”

“You can be as sarcastic as you like, but I think one could be forgiven for not noticing the instruments at all...”   

There were five women, lavishly, though scantily, dressed arranged in a half circle in one corner of the courtyard, each one holding an instrument. We were seated facing them with our backs against the edge of a fountain, the centrepiece of the courtyard, which the sun touched just the top of at this hour, on its way to the far wall. We were all seated on pillows, naturally.  

“I say, that’s rather good isn’t it? Listen to that thing they’re doing, the sort of wibbley sound...”

“Yes, it’s called tremolo, where has our host, the guide fellow, got to George? He was just sitting over there before...”

“Tremolo eh? Lovely. And I don’t know, probably just to the gentleman’s or something, listen, they’re almost finished I think” 

And so they were. When they’d finished they gave brief nods of their heads in acknowledgement of George’s singular and abundant applause and then began to disperse. One of the women approached us. 

“You enjoyed the playing I believe gentlemen?” 

“Oh yes, lovely, just really, really lovely, I must say I particularly enjoyed the tremolo you know, which naturally, with a keen musical ear I-“

“The playing was delightful, thank you Madam”

There was a pause.

“Thank you, just opposable thumbs and practice really”

“Ha! Opposable thumbs! Excellent, yes-“

“And now perhaps you would like to follow me gentlemen, so we might have a word”

“ Ah, splendid! Yes we’d love-"

“Actually I’m afraid we had better wait here Madam, you see our host has gone somewhere but I expect he shall return directly and we wouldn’t want-“

She started to laugh, an unusual laugh, a lovely laugh. 

“Ah, but gentlemen, I am your host”.

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